Although Japan has achieved technological self-reliance, it is
not playing the lead role in all areas of technological
development, and there should be no reason to expect that it
should. It is sufficient for Japan to have appropriate areas in
which it may contribute to the rest of the world, and any attempt
to monopolize the potentials of development in technology would
be dangerous. Especially in view of the military potential of the
most advanced sciences and technologies, it is important that
each country have some share in global science and technology
activities, with no one country dominating.

To this end, establishing a world-wide science and technology
information network would make an important contribution.

The institutionalization of science and technology has been
occurring since World War I, and both in developed and in
developing countries, government expenditures to promote science
and technology have grown tremendously. In Japan, however,
government involvement and investment have been extremely small,
the leading role in research and development having been played
by private enterprises. In other words, individual enterprises
own the most advanced technologies. This is one reason why
Japanese R. & D. has often been expressed as "r. &
D."

There is the opinion that Japan won the competition for
quality control but not for technology innovation. This reflects
the difference between countries that have been engaged in
developing science and technology mainly for military purposes -
for which only high efficiency and quality have been sought and
the possible general national economic benefits of them
disregarded - and Japan, which has specialized in applying the
theoretical achievements of modern science and technology for
improving people's lives-in other words, for commercial purposes.
It is totally unreasonable to have people dying from starvation
in an age when man can go to the moon. Everyone should be assured
of the right to oppose the development of science and technology
that has been inseparably connected with such political insanity.

The utilization of the most advanced technology for people's
day-to-day living should be developed more positively in each
country. Bolder experiments (with certain conditions) should be
attempted in developing countries.

However, because industrialization and the development of
science and technology involve the principle of private economy,
they tend to be accompanied by such negative consequences as
those discussed in the section on environmental pollution.
Consideration for human dignity and human rights by scientists,
engineers, and industrialists must be constantly promoted. As one
scientist has described it, it is easy to understand that the
most advanced areas related to military technology are the areas
containing the most attractive challenges for scientists and
engineers. It is most unpleasant, however, to see them
exchanging, as an equal trade, the existence of mankind for
personal gain.

In this regard, the charter promulgated by the Science Council
of Japan in 1980 is extremely promising. The council declared
three principles for atomic energy research: the research should
be autonomous, democratic, and freely accessible to all.

The charter declares that "science must aim only at
enriching the lives of mankind," and "in order to
ensure the sound development of science and to promote its useful
application," scientists must:

1. be conscious of the meaning and aim of their research
and contribute to the welfare of mankind and world peace;

2. defend the freedom of learning and respect originality
in research;

3. promote the harmonious development of all scientific
fields and encourage the diffusion of the spirit and
knowledge of science;

4. be alert to the abuse of science and make efforts to
prevent it;

5. respect the international validity of science and
promote scientific ex change around the world.

This welcome declaration was an achievement encouraged by
recommendations of the Occupation forces intended to
fundamentally reform the Japanese system of research and
education after 1947 (Yuasa 1984). Just as the Japanese could not
prosecute the war criminals on their own initiative, the internal
circumstances of latecomer Japan were such that, unless there was
pressure from the outside, it was difficult for people to gain
the opportunity for change. What is to be noted is that inherent
elements had matured so that Japan could respond to pressure from
the outside. Under the Meiji state, the potential for reform in
the worlds of science and technology had been limited.

Since the Tokugawa shogunate, two historical veins had
intersected in Japan, distinguished according to how the idea of
"Japanese spirit and Western technology" was used. In
one, the idea was used to represent progress, while in the other,
it was used to disparage Western technology as merely a tool
borne of a culturally and spiritually impoverished world, and, at
the same time, to promote a reactionary, exclusive nationalism.

Even as long ago as the ninth century, when Japan was actively
importing Chinese culture and technology, there were those in
Japan advocating "Chinese technology, Japanese spirit"
(Yuasa 1984).

And again, 350 years after the introduction of the gun (1543)
and of Christianity (1549) into Japan, the current slogan was
"Japanese spirit and Western technology" (Yuasa 1984).

The defeat of China in the Opium War was a serious shock not
only to scholars of Western learning but to everyone, leading to
the publication of such arguments for coastal defence as Kaikoku
shidan, a work by Hayashi Shibei. The defeat of China also
triggered a shift in the Japanese scholarly community away from
the Chinese model, as represented by the T'ien-kung k'ai-wu,
a seventeenth-century encyclopaedia of technological science by
Sung Ying-hsing, to Western science and technology.82

In the early nineteenth century, "Japanese spirit and
Western technology" had a progressive meaning that continued
until early Meiji. However, with the establishment and
stabilization of Meiji state power, the nature of the idea began
to change, and an abusive manipulation of technology began. The
tendency was most marked among military officers and conservative
politicians, and there was little public resistance.

According to Yuasa (1984), it was some 50 years before anyone
appeared to object publicly and persuasively to the contempt of
science and technology that "Japanese spirit and Western
technology" was being made to represent.

In 1915, Tanakadate Aikitsu (a science professor at the
University of Tokyo) gave an address to the House of Peers (which
was led by ultra-nationalists and Shintoists) under the little,
"The State of Aircraft Research and Development," in
which he campaigned for the establishment of an institute of
aviation:

In my understanding, you regard Western civilization as a
materialistic. mechanical civilization, a physical
civilization devoid of spiritual aspects. You maintain that
the Oriental civilization, on the contrary. is metaphysical
and spiritual, and that humanity, justice, loyalty, and
filial piety are the specialties of the Orient, and your
concern is how to harmonize these two currents. However, my
question is whether or not we can define Eastern and Western
civilizations in such a simple way.... l doubt if Western
civilization has been established on such a shallow
foundation.

Adducing the heliocentric theory of Galileo, he continues:

Once he had concluded that the earth revolves around the
sun, he resolutely maintained his conviction.... Such an
attitude cannot be taken to be from intentions to make money,
attain fame, or the like. Perhaps this is the mind that
lodges behind what is called the materialistic Western
civilization. It seems to me that there are many living
Galileos and Newtons in contemporary Europe and America, and
they are cultivating the source of civilization.83

In this, we can recognize, beyond the digressions peculiar to
Japan, the establishment of modern scientific thought with a
universal nature. Nonetheless, this kind of thinking was not
victorious over the transformed notion of "Japanese spirit
and Western technology." Those who supported the military
fascist regime, which was interested in Western science and
technology only as a means, were aware, on the one hand, that the
outcome of any modern war was a matter of scientific and
technological potential, but, on the other, as a serious
contradiction, rejected the "ideas" inherent in modern
science and technology, thus finally leading to self-collapse.

Unfortunately, there was a revival of the pre-war notion of
"Japanese spirit and Western technology": the new
version held that Japan's loss in World War II was a defeat of
its scientific and technological capabilities. Post-war
reconstruction of Japan was therefore to be aimed at Japan
becoming a great power through development of its science and
technology.

The conflict here is an antagonism between the nature of
politics and the philosophy of science and technology. The
relationship between science and politics has reached a critical
point in the present age. Tanakadate cited Newton and Galileo,
who lived in a time when science was not yet institutionalized,
was politically independent. The moral difficulty of scientists
in more recent times was well represented by Einstein. As a
result of the institutionalization of science, however, modern
scientists now constitute a part of the power élite, and one
would be hard put to find an Einstein among the agro-chemists who
developed Agent Orange or the economists who discuss the kill
ratio of a particular weapon and their like.

These people are unaware that they are "fierce
animals" bred as specialists of knowledge and technology
within the state system of the United States. They are
'specialists without spirit and sensualists without heart."
The contemporary age is one of a gigantic institutionalized
science. An analogy may be drawn from the mafia chieftain who is
also a devout church-goer, activities that in his consciousness
are non-contradictory. This unconscious schizophrenia has
debilitated modern scientists and engineers.

There have been criticisms and warnings from the scientific
community against the induction of top scientists into the
bureaucratic power structure, and therefore I need not take the
matter up here. Among Japanese scholars, Hiroshige Toru and
Nakayama Shigeru have published excellent works.84

In this regard, we can be sympathetic to the warnings and
hostilities of the participants in our dialogues concerning
specialists in science and technology, although their criticisms
are stereotyped and lack concreteness. The privileges and
influences of the élite in science and technology are as great
in developing countries, in which the absolute number of
scientists and engineers is small, as in the superpowers. In such
circumstances, there is no other body of scientists in these
countries that could act as a counterbalance, a check to those
who become a part of the power élite. What is worse, those
élites continue in office even after changes in government.

Nakaoka (1986), in tracing the history of modern technology in
Japan, points out the surprising similarities to development in
the West. Indeed, while

Japanese technological development has been unique, it
constitutes a part of a worldwide trend in technology
development, and therefore no country need follow rigidly the
particular developmental pattern of any one country; rather, each
should choose the one most suited to its special needs and
conditions.

Focusing on the Japanese iron-manufacturing and
cotton-spinning technologies, Nakaoka concentrated on management,
labour, supporting technologies, and related services. He
examined Japan's lag in comparison with the development stage of
iron-manufacturing technology in the West when Japan started and
how it caught up with the West. He emphasizes that the existing
large stock of skills and accumulated technology in Japanese
traditional iron-manufacturing was of critical importance, in
spite of the fact that the scale of production was small and
equipment was primitive.

At Kamaishi Ironworks, for example, a shortage of charcoal
forced the plant to switch to coke for fuel. The attempt to
manufacture coke failed, however, due to an incomplete
understanding of the manufacturing process, and it was not until
management was privatized that success came: the scale of
operations was reduced to balance the supply of fuel with demand,
and the links with transportation and other services were
rationalized.

Nakaoka emphasizes the critical role played by the
establishment and adjustment of linkages with such peripheral
factors as fuel, power source, and transportation problems in
determining success or failure. He also observes that the time
required for each stage of development in the West was
considerably shortened in Japan (a total of 400 years versus
about 50), "as if the Buddle blast-furnace had actually been
skipped over."

Nakaoka also examined the history of the modern development -
after passing through the three stages of its early development -
of the textile industry, which confirmed the importance of
related technology and supporting services. He also traced two
significant transformations: (1) from management by
administrators to management by business professionals and the
formation of skilled labour and (2) from the employment of farm
labour, which is completely unaccustomed to the systematized,
regulated working conditions of a factory, to the employment of
factory workers.

Nakaoka stresses the significance of fringe technologies in
spinning as the crucial elements leading to Japan's
industrialization success. The technology for manufacturing
wooden machines, for example, was developed by the makers of
looms and water-wheels, who had high-level engineering skills.
Native technology was joined with imported Western technology to
form an intermediary, or hybrid, technology. The mechanical
systems, key parts, and energy sources were Western, and they
were combined with native Japanese parts etc., to create the
necessary linkages and stages in the production process. Toyoda
Sakichi, for example, invented the automatic loom using imported
cast-iron parts for the key components, while the rest was
constructed of wood. Toyoda was able to duplicate the metal
English loom by cleverly combining local materials and know-how
with those from the West.

Ishii (1986) makes reference to a kind of technological
linkage in which a new technology does not replace traditional
technology; rather, what is fostered is a coexistence of mutual
prosperity through the realization of a supplementary relation
whereby, taking cloth-making as an example, the spinning is done
by labourers at the factory, while the weaving is done by
part-time workers at home. In this example, the most difficult
and labour-consuming processes were performed by modern machines
in the factory, while the weaving process could be done at home
in the traditional manner because the Japanese market demand was
for narrow cloth, suitable for use in the making of the
traditional kimono. Western weaving machines were capable only of
producing broadcloth, and so they were installed in the factories
for weaving cloth to be used for military uniforms and cloth for
export to other Asian countries.

Incidentally, the development of cotton spinning placed cotton
ahead of linen among textile materials. In the present age of
chemical fibres, on the other hand, goods made of cotton or linen
have come to be considered luxury items.

Regarding technology policy, Uchida (1986) examines the
history of technological policies from 1825 to 1935, dividing it
into four periods. He described the characteristics of each as
follows.

The first is the period up to the Meiji Restoration
(1825-1868), when the prototype of the Meiji government's
technology policy was to be found in the policy of the Tokugawa
shogunate and other feudal clans. This was also the time when
absolute government control over technology and information was
crumbling as a result of both internal and international events.
The promotion of industry by feudal clans as a financial policy
to increase cash revenue would form the basis for the new
government's central policy of industrial promotion on a national
scale. Since the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, the
samurai class was evolving from one made up of warriors to one of
administrative bureaucrats, which aided the government in its
formation of an administrative apparatus and the development of
needed economic and technological policies.

The second period (1868-1885) was characterized by impetuous
Westernization represented by model factories under direct
government operation in which not only were the equipment and
machines imported but the engineers and foremen were also brought
over from abroad to provide operational guidance. In 1873, the
number of such foreigners totaled 239 (from 1875, the total
number began to decrease). In this period, however, the
government had no comprehensive technological programme or
technology policy. Opinions were divided among leading
politicians, and each government office was engaged in its own
programme of technology importation and personnel training, with
no integration at the level of the central government.

In the third period (1885-1910), there was an important policy
change: for the first time bureaucratic management of state-run
factories gave way to private management, as a direct result of
accumulated debts and fiscal difficulties of the central
government. The change of policy was accompanied by a movement of
personnel from government enterprises to the private sector,
which provided an opportunity for a broad dissemination of
technology. On the other hand, in such areas as railways,
meteorology, and communications, which were kept under government
control, each ministry established its own school to train and
secure human resources. Laboratories, research institutes, and
experiment stations were established for agriculture, industry,
and fishery technology in this period.

The technology policies of the army and the navy were
characterized by a strong inclination for weapons independence
(home production, uniformity, and standardization). This goal was
attained by the beginning of the 1910s (though later for the
navy, because of the nature of its weapons).

Self-reliance in technology was achieved mid way through the
fourth period (1910-1935). At this time, the minimal linkages
among technologies had been established on a national scale and a
new stage of development then began. Though in the past military
technology and science had been strictly in the hands of the
government, in this period, further technological development
required the participation of the private sector. The military's
policies aimed at Japan becoming a superpower corresponded with
the government's goal of making the country a first-class
industrial nation.

In this (last) period of tremendous development of the heavy
and chemical industries, the machine and chemical industries.
under the momentum provided by World War I, were able to
substitute their own products for imports, thus bringing to a
halt their costly purchases of many goods from abroad. Also in
this period, newly-risen Konzern formed big business
groups with the technologies of the heavy industries as their
central pillars. One such group was the Institute of Physical and
Chemical Research, which was transformed and enlarged from the
Institute of Basic Science Research, established with government
assistance in 1916.

Uchida concludes that it was only with the establishment of a
technology agency in 1942 that technology became an independent
item in Japan's total national policy.

Concerning post-war science and technology policy, the
establishment in 1959 of the Science and Technology Council was
significant. Its members include the prime minister (chairman);
minister of finance; minister of education; director-general of
the Economic Planning Agency; director-general of the Science and
Technology Agency; chairman of the Science Council of Japan; and
three others appointed by the prime minister. This represented an
unprecedentedly powerful system for the administration of science
and technology. Prior to the establishment of this council, the
Science and Technology Agency (established in May 1956) had been
active in carrying out the administration of science and
technology, aiming at the promotion of science and technology to
contribute to the development of the national economy.

According to Yuasa (1984), the two 10-year programmes
established by the Science and Technology Council, that is, (1)
the "Basic Measures for the Promotion of Science and
Technology Aiming at Ten Years Hence," of 1960, and (2) the
1977 "Science and Technology Policy in the Age of Limited
Resources - A Basic Ten-Year Programme," were extremely
significant. Though monotonous and long, the government documents
describing the programmes provide us with a good picture of the
problems Japan faced.

The response by the Science Council of Japan to the 1977
proposal was summarized as "Science and Technology at the
Turning Point" (1978) This and the "Scientists'
Charter," published by the Science Council of Japan in 1980,
make a pair. It is noteworthy that in the charter, Unesco's
"Recommendation on the Status of Scientists" was
interpreted as both a "charter of rights" and an
"ethical code."85

In a study, "The Historical Development of Science and
Technology," conducted by the Policy Research Group and
chaired by Sassa Manabu, the call was made for a new, holonic and
flexible path of scientific and technological development in view
of the observation that there was a trend toward
overspecialization (atomism) in science and, at the same time,
the creation of Big Science.86

Household labour is the main form of labour in societies based
on agricultural production, but the household in Japan was not
necessarily a unit based on blood ties. Depending on the scale
and type of production, outsiders were incorporated into the
household to complete a single production unit, and all members,
regardless of age or sex, were expected to work together. Thus,
even the heaviest labour was performed by both men and women.
What sexual divisions there were resulted from the women
undertaking tasks that men were unwilling to perform. Female
labour was indispensably important, not only in the preparation
of meals but in the production, care, and storage of foodstuffs
and clothing and in social activities centred on festivals,
weddings, funerals, and similar events. Child rearing was not
counted as work.

Thus, the situation in the traditional, non-farming Japanese
household, in which production and social relations are the male
domain and housework and child rearing the female, was not the
norm in farm households. Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), the father
of Japanese ethnology, stated that the peasantry had to have more
than 100 different skills to be able to provide the variety of
high-quality necessities that formed the basis of a
self-sufficient life-style. And these skills had to operate
within the limits set by nature, beyond any human control.
Besides the basic handling of crops, tasks needing to be done
included the making of fuel, fertilizer, sacks, and rope; house
repairs; and jobs essential to the basic functioning of the
community, such as road repairs and maintenance and supervision
of temples and shrines. The peasant was thus not only an expert
agriculturist, he (or she) was also at times blacksmith,
carpenter, stonemason, earth mover, hydraulic engineer,
veterinarian, hunter, woodcutter, and weaver. Ideally, the
peasant household had at all times someone able to function in
one or more of these capacities.

Because the size of the household has shrunk over the past
century' one peasant household after another has fallen into
ruin, unable to keep enough members to maintain their existence.
During the same time, new and smaller households have appeared,
family units whose existence has depended on the multiple efforts
of the wife.

An increase in the number of family members had been thought
desirable in principle to enhance the labour force, but the
bitter experience of many families was that too many children
were "more a burden for the present than a help for the
future."87

A new problem, requiring a new solution and a new setting for
its solution, arose as the limits of agricultural production were
reached amidst an unhealthy environment of high birth rates and
high death rates. The new, smaller families could not hope to
find a solution to their predicament either in the village or in
agriculture. From the beginning of Meiji, surplus labour left the
villages, and the basic production unit - all family members
working together - was transplanted to the towns. A large family
in the countryside was thought to be proof of surplus wealth,
just as a small family meant poverty. In both extremes, all
household members had to work extremely hard, and whether
families remained in the countryside or not, all were defined by
the need for all to work together to keep the household viable.
This was the Japanese household when the Japanese economy was
beginning to take off.

Yokoyama Gennosuke, author of Nihon no kaső shakai, a
report on labour conditions at the end of the last century,
points out that, in a survey of 1,615 Tokyo establishments
employing 50 or more workers, 111,913 were men and 184,839 women
(for a total of 296,752).88 Even if we take for
granted that women workers would outnumber men in such
light-industry factories as those producing raw silk, tea, and
matches, not to mention the weaving and spinning factories - this
was after all an age of light industry - Yokoyama also looked
ahead, to an age when "we will have to depend on the machine
for production and women will increase in even greater numbers
among the work-force."89 He pointed to the
decrease in the numbers of male workers in lantern, spinning, and
camphor factories.

Further, "even in such industries as mining and iron and
steel production, where one would not expect to see women
working, one in fact encounters quite a few," Yokoyama
noted, recording that more than 300 females worked daily at the
Tokyo Arsenal.90" He explained, however, that
most of these women were family members of other arsenal workers.

The need to make ends meet compelled entire families into the
factories. "In Japan, only glass, shoemaking, and
metal-working factories relied on skilled labour"; the day
would come when "we rely entirely on machines," and,
consequently, the number of women workers will increase.91

P. H. Douglas (1902- ), using wage data, proved that the size
of the household budget determined the amount of outside labour a
household would supply. In Japan, Arisawa Hiromi provided a
similar analysis.92

According to Douglas and Arisawa: (1) the lower the income of
the head of the household, the greater the chance that family
members will work out side the household; (2) when the income of
the head of the household is stable, the chances of other family
members working outside increase with better pay; (3) the
household head will seek work without regard to the level of
wages. This theory, based on the premise of female labour
supporting the household income, is persuasive and widely
applicable.

If we combine this theory with Yokoyama's observations, we
find that the appearance of female and child labour in the
market-place was due to changes not only in technology but also
in the household economy. Examining Japan's experience, one is
better able to understand why European skilled workers made such
a negative response to technological change and why labour unions
and left-wing political parties opposed the participation of
women.93 The response to the crisis of the traditional
view of the family and the household economy was negative. In
Japan, however, the response to the capitalist transformation of
technology was made by entire households based on the
co-operative, whole-family labour practice characteristic of the
peasant economy, perhaps befitting the nation's status as a late
industrializer. And this situation has not changed much today. Of
families in the 1980s depending on wage labour for their
livelihood, "more than half have both husband and wife
working, in one form or another. . . with wives of low-income
earners especially liable to be working and contributing a
sizable portion of the household income."94

Times have changed since Yokoyama made his observations. The
standard of living and consumption have risen to an entirely new
level, but wages have risen only after prices, often after a
great time lag. Following the oil shock of the early 1970s,
stagnation has affected real disposable income. This represents a
modified application of the second part of the Douglas-Arisawa
theory: female labour has increased, principally as part-time
labour, which implies an increase in low-paid work.

Whereas before the oil shock renovation in technology brought
women into the market-place to fill a labour shortage - and, in
the case of married women, to defend their own household budgets
against inflation - after the oil shock, companies selected
part-time female labour as a cost-saving alternative. This has
been made possible by the technological streamlining effected in
factories (FA, or factory automation) and in offices ((OA, office
automation).

To understand the place of female labour in Japanese society,
it is necessary to look at the wife's position within the
household economy. The male head of the household in Japan does
have ultimate responsibility for fiscal management (if there are
finances to manage), but, traditionally, and this holds true
today, the budget and the actual running of the household are the
responsibility of the wife, who receives all monies brought home
by her husband. After consultation with his wife, the head of the
household receives an allowance from that income. It is rare for
the husband to interfere in her management of the family budget,
which, incidentally, partly accounts for the fact that the
nation's leading economists are ignorant of everyday prices in
the market-place.

It is true that a trend among young working couples is for
both partners to manage the budget, but these people are still in
a distinct minority. The wife's control over the family budget
has no relation to the size of the income, but where all must
work to maintain the economic viability of the household, her
authority increases dramatically. Her responsibilities then
expand to include not just all the housework, even though she is
no longer a pure housewife, but also to the earning of a portion
of the household income through labour in the market-place.

The biggest driving force behind supplementary family income
is the cost of housing, especially of home ownership; the
"new poverty" exists in housing. Because of the high
cost and limited availability of housing in Tokyo, most commuters
must spend an average of 90 minutes travailing each way between
home and job, and even then they cannot afford a house with a
garden.

The next greatest demand on the family budget forcing wives to
work is the cost of children's education. Through the past
century of political, social, and economic upheavals - continuing
in the present drastic technological revolution - what has proved
to be of most lasting value is the knowledge, qualifications, and
skills acquired through education. Thus there is a high regard
and high expectations for education. For the middle class, into
which the majority of the Japanese fall, an educated citizenry
with income but no wealth, to survive in an urbanized,
industrialized, highly technological information society,
families can pass on but one thing to their children and
grandchildren: education.

Still following the Douglas-Arisawa theory, an increase in the
income of the head of the household results in the belated
entrance of his children into the labour market, after a period
devoted to education. The serious burden the housing problem
imposes on the family budget makes it unavoidable that the wife
also enters the labour market.

I thus speak of the survival, even the thriving, of the
"wife's domain," even though there is no legal basis
for this authority. For the Japanese, this acknowledgement of the
special role and domain of the wife is an ethic that functions
subconsciously within everyday life, a natural part of that life.
For this reason, especially in a large household with two or
three generations sharing a rural domicile, it is usually thought
natural for a bride to spend long periods of unpaid labour
learning work and management skills, even under what may seem to
be unbearable work conditions, to support the family. In this
capacity, the bride is functioning as a candidate to be the mate
of the head of the household, her husband's acceptance depending
in part on her performance